


Nautica the Night Owl

by Tentaculiferous



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Alcohol, Amica Endurae, College, Cuddling & Snuggling, Energon, F/F, Female Characters, Female-Centric, Femslash, Femslash February, Fraternities & Sororities, Girls Kissing, Kissing, Roommates, Sleep, Spooning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-17
Updated: 2016-08-07
Packaged: 2018-05-21 05:39:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6040312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tentaculiferous/pseuds/Tentaculiferous
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So we know Nautica is a night owl, right? And Firestar is as different to her as night is to day. She certainly doesn’t appreciate being kept up late, and so she develops her own solution for getting her nocturnal roommate to sleep…</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Nautica/Firestar: Nautica the Night Owl

For the second time that cycle, Firestar’s optics flickered in the darkness as she powered back up. She was stuck in the earliest time slot for Intro to Philosophy and needed all the recharge she could get. Meanwhile, her roommate apparently planned on staying up all night giggling over whatever was on her datapad. 

Firestar could see it glowing in the darkness, held in Nautica’s hands while she lay on her front on her berth, legs kicking back and forth in mirth—and were those math equations on the screen? Who could find math funny? Nautica was a total freak. 

“Didn’t I tell you to go to bed?” Firestar asked, her voice taut with controlled annoyance.

Her roommate abruptly stopped laughing. The purple femme turned toward Firestar, her expression contrite.

“I’m sorry, did I wake you?” 

Firestar ground her denta together. What else could have woken her? For _the second time_? 

“Yes, but it’s alright.” Firestar said. Because that was the polite thing to say. And anyone would know she really meant "No, that's really annoying, stop it." Any normal person anyway. Nautica took her at her word, and turned back to the datapad.

The datapad that had woken her up. Firestar stared at her, optics wide, at the sheer _audacity_ of her roommate. When a little chuckle emerged from her roommate, she made up her mind. Firestar slid off of the berth and strode over to where the other femme lay.

She hopped up on Nautica’s berth, crawling up next to her torso stealthily. Nautica was still immersed in her datapad, too focused to notice her. That changed when Firestar started kissing her neck. The datapad clattered to the berth, finally forgotten.

“W-what are you doing?!” Nautica squeaked.

Firestar blew on her antenna, grinning when she heard Nautica gasp. She’d always had a suspicion it would be sensitive. She gave the top of it a quick flick with her tongue, and knew she’d hit pay dirt when she felt the other femme squirm under her in response.

“I’m helping you into recharge.” Firestar said. “Nothing knocks a girl out like a good overload.” She ran her fingers over the seams of Nautica’s interface panel, chuckling as she felt just how warm it was getting already.

She was completely unprepared for the datapad that smashed into her face. She went tumbling off the berth, hitting the ground with a resounding crash. 

Firestar looked up to see her roommate staring down at her with her face twisted in worry. 

“I…I didn’t mean to hit you that hard!” Nautica said. 

At seeing Firestar’s furious glare, she offered “At least it wasn’t with my wrench?” 

They both startled and turned to the wall as someone began pounding on it. 

“Hey, shut the hell up in there. SOME OF US ARE TRYING TO RECHARGE!”

Great, now they’d pissed off the tankformers next door. 

She was going to kill her roommate. 

“Get some recharge. On your own.” Firestar ground out. “If I wake up to the light of a datapad again I’m throwing it in the trash chute.” She stormed over to her berth and climbed up on it, turning away from Nautica to face the wall. 

Nautica hastily turned the datapad off and tucked it away. She copied Firestar in lying down, staring at the blank wall of the sorority room as she tried to get her systems to power down. It was going to be a long, boring night. Maybe she should have taken Firestar up on her offer of a little recharge aid. She wondered if it was too late to do so.  
“Hey, Firestar…about that offer…”

~


	2. Tender

It's late in the night cycle, closer to the beginning of morning than the middle of the night, when Firestar walks through the opened door to their room. In a show of consideration, she has turned the flames atop her head down to a lull, the light cast by them the dull glow of dying embers, not the casually dancing fire she feels. 

Opening night had gone fantastically, and the cast members had gone from the stage to the afterparty without ever losing the limelight. Her quiet Amica had left after only a few hours in, but for once, Firestar was the one who felt wide awake in these dark hours. Even now she wasn't really tired. She really could have danced all night. Unfortunately for her, no one else quite shared her stamina on this night. Once the hardest partiers had turned in (or blacked out), Firestar had had to call it quits too. A party of one was no party at all. 

Firestar thrived at being in the spotlight, at being the toast of the party and showing off her considerable dance skills, more than she did on high grade--she had once tried to drink Nautica under the table in a contest, thinking her much smaller and nerdier roommate would be easy enough to beat. Instead, she'd become a slurring, stumbling mess, while Nautica was cool and collected and could still recite the 20 Commandments of the Way of Flame required to prove her superior sobriety (Firestar had produced a semi-blasphemous gibberish that their theology-major sorority sister said would have her excommunicated if the priests heard it). 

On this night, she hadn't drank nearly as much as that fateful occasion, but she was still pretty well done in. Perhaps it was because of that, that she forgot about the storage box full of costumes at the foot of her berth. One pede slammed into it, sending the box skittering across the floor with a bang, and several capes and accessories rolled out of it. 

Damn, her feet were big, she thought. And she'd had them trimmed to the absolute minimum size her height could support. Where was her dancer's grace when she needed it? She cursed as she began shoving stage gear back into the box.

"Firestar? What was that?" a sleepy voice mumbled from the berth across from her. 

Firestar looked up, and caught sight of Nautica, stretched out on the berth, her eyes glowing a soft blue in the darkness. She stood up, swaying slightly from the after-effects of a little too much high grade. 

Maybe it was all those liters of high grade that made her say "Nothing, go back to sleep." to Nautica, with a gentle smile on her face that Nautica had never seen her show to anyone. Her "friend"'s face was usually lit up like a star with a confident grin that would dazzle all who seen it. There were many ways to describe Firestar, but calm and peaceful were usually far from the mark. Maybe her optics were playing tricks on her in the shadowy light? 

But no, her optics were seeing clearly, and could only see better as the source of light, Firestar's helm flame, drew closer. The femme in question was slowly and carefully climbing onto Nautica's berth. Nautica assumed she was coming to offer Nautica the "sleep aid" she'd been graciously bestowing on her once in a while, when Nautica had been tossing and turning for too many hours. But for once, she actually did not need help getting to sleep--she'd been soundly in the land of dreams when Firestar had come stumbling into the room. Was this how Firestar always felt when Nautica was clanking about the room in the wee hours? 

Firestar lay down behind Nautica, her arms wrapping around the smaller femme in a tender, cherishing gesture that Nautica had never witnessed from her before. She snuggled up against Nautica gently, the complete opposite of how she usually acted, either in bed or out of it. Usually she was all flamboyant, dynamic gestures, meant to convey emotion quickly and powerfully.  
Nautica was struggling with indecision, wondering if she should turn her roommate down for the first time ever or if she should give up and enjoy a fun sleep aid that would probably wake her up more and completely eliminate any chances of getting back to sleep that night.

But Firstar's strong white hand never dipped lower than where it rested on Nautica's abdominal plate. The teasing brush against her interface panel never came, and nor did the strong clicking noise Nautica had some to associate with her roommate retracting her own panel. Instead, the dim glow emanating from Firestar's head behind her began to dim. 

"Firestar?" she asked, her voice soft in the dark room. 

No response. 

Nautica shifted slightly, peeking back behind her. Her Amica's vibrant optics were hidden, her mouth slightly open as all her vents gently inhaled and exhaled air. She was asleep. And still, there was that tender, vulnerable expression on her face. 

Nautica settled back down, carefully arranging herself so that she didn't whack Firestar with her propellers. She could still feel the other femme, her metal strong and warm against Nautica's back, the soft breeze of her vents pleasantly cool in contrast. She could get used to this, she thought. It was something two Amicas should do, cuddling each other and giving themselves someone to hold when they didn't have a Conjunx. She wondered what she could do to bring out this side of Firestar more often. 

Her friend was too preoccupied with looking cool and amazing and winning everyone's admiration. A quiet night in wasn't her style. Firestar only made use of the room when it served her purposes: either by providing beauty recharge in the berth, or in allowing herself a quiet space to cram for a test or practice lines. She had to be in desperate need of some hardcore studying to do that though; Firestar usually studied down in the sorority common room, where she could enlist others to read the script with her or quiz her on needed subjects. 

Nautica was usually grateful for that. She wasn't sure how much of Firestar's attention she could put up with and maintain their illusion of being best buds. But this quiet, gentle side of her that Nautica did not know existed, made her rethink that. Maybe she could exhort her to stay in Nautica's berth post-sleepaid from now on. Afterall, it was a perfectly good berth, so why get up and cross the room for no good reason? She would, she decided, appeal to Firestar's ego. Simply saying that she slept better next to Firestar would make the other femme's hair light up like an inferno; she was bound to say yes. 

Problem solved. Now she could sleep. Nautica shuttered her optics and prepared to drift into recharge. 

...  
...  
...  
Damnit. She couldn't sleep. She couldn't possibly wake Firestar up for a sleep aid. It wasn't so bad though, she thought. Firestar really did feel nice against her. She could just lay there for a few more hours, peek at her tablet, and enjoy the feel of Firestar's strong arms wrapped around her. Why would she want to sleep through that?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know where this chapter came from. I thought I was done with these ladies, but when I saw the prompt "tender" over at femslashficlets on DW, it made me think of Firestar, and how she could probably be tender to someone only in the dark, where there's no audience and no one to really impress. Even then she'd have to think about impressing her lover, hence why her tender side still needed booze to bring it out. 
> 
> I thought about why Firestar is the way she is. To be tender and caring is to be vulnerable, and to act arrogant and brash can be a shield someone puts up to protect themselves. I like the idea that Firestar's brashness is in part caused by insecurity and a need for other's admiration, and that she could mellow out and be more compatible with Nautica if she had Real Love she could rely on. 
> 
> I wouldn't want her to do a total personality 180; I like brash, confident Firestar. But maybe be a more tactful, thoughtful Firestar on top of that--characters and people should grow, after all.

**Author's Note:**

> they got even noisier after that. The tankformers, who had an early morning test on pre-Camian art to rest up for, were not pleased. But that’s another story.
> 
> I can't get enough of this pairing. I generally hate putting anything less than 1k words up on its own, and so this may morph into a drabble/one-shot collection for Nautica/Firestar.


End file.
